WHEN John Butler plays, it’s not a picnic, it’s a feast. Two years after his last album, and 22 months after his last show in Newcastle, Butler and band delivered a knockout show at the heavier end of the rock spectrum.
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While he played five songs from the Flesh & Blood album released in 2014, it was the rearranging of his classics that made it a memorable night. When you’re as talented as Butler and his offsiders, Byron Luiters on bass and Grant Gerathy on drums, you can lay down the foundation of a great song and then layer it, colour it, with new directions and still produce a stunning result.
From the first song, Cold Wind, you could feel Butler reshape a song into something practically new. This chilling ode to indigenous people began with Butler and an acoustic guitar, but the sound coming from the instrument was electric, as Butler the master technician demonstrated all night long. Cold Wind morphed into a funky jazz instrumental, that segued into I’d Do Anything, which further signalled it was going to be a night for the “Electric John” Butler to come out and play.
By the time they rollicked through early crowd favourite Better Than, it was easy for Butler to taunt the crowd with the notion he had rocked them out of their comfort zone. “You have truly come out of the jungle,” he laughed.
After a couple of false starts with Bullet Girl, a tortured love song from Flesh & Blood, he got back on track. While it begins as a pared-down acoustic solo, by the end it’s a scorcher, an anthemic stadium rocker.
There wasn’t going to be a rest tonight, no time out. If you got off your butt on Tuesday night to go out to a live show, Butler was going to make you pay the price.
The show veered back into more familiar territory, with Betterman (“because you are beautiful”), Butler’s powerful slide guitar to the fore, flowing directly into Used to Get High, which slowly built to an explosive crescendo.
At 50 minutes in, Butler finally slowed the juggernaut down, to talk about Ocean, which he began playing 20 years ago as a busker on the streets of Fremantle. “This song is getting on...the song is growing, changing, getting more weird, like me,” he told us. “It’s a good friend of mine.”
This epic tune, a Butler trademark, is 15 minutes of guitar brilliance. It’s just Butler and us, feeling the energy, riding the wave.
When Luiters and Gerathy return, Butler picks up his Fender electric guitar and blazes through Blame It On Me, another signature rocker from the Flesh & Blood album. He teases the Fender, and the song drives into hard-edged rock territory.
They back it up with Close To You, played as a pure rocker, and the crowd loves it. How can they resist: “I'm just a one way crazy locomotive jumpin’ off of my tracks.'cause I'm jacked up, sucked up, cut down, thrown around, discarded like a cigarette butt”.
And boom, into Devil Woman, another thumping rocker off Flesh & Blood.
The set ends with Zebra, after Butler works the audience into a call-and-response frenzy of the scat lines.
The encore offers Butler solo with Losing You, an incredibly emotional love song. So this is what a real lion tamer looks like…
It’s back to driving beats,and dancing in the aisles, for Living In The City and Funky Tonight to wrap it up.
Butler’s heading into the studio soon. Given what he’s already put on the table, fans will be eager to learn what he’s got in store for the next part of the journey.
At 40 he’s hit his stride, improving his show and showmanship at every step. The face of the crowd looks like it’s been there the whole time. They’ll be keenly waiting in Newcastle for the next chapter.
